The Husband They Bought To Die

Chapter Eight: The Widow's Price

Sabine Royce's private office sat at the top of the old lighthouse, a round room of glass and dark wood with the whole harbor spread out below like scattered jewels. She closed the door behind Gideon, crossed to a cabinet, and poured two glasses of whiskey without asking if he wanted one.

"Sit down, Gideon Morrow," she said.

His name hung in the air between them. Nobody had spoken it aloud in three years, and hearing it now felt like stepping into cold water.

He didn't sit. "You have me confused with someone else."

"I don't." She set a glass on the desk beside him. "Your father's last gala, three years ago. You were bored out of your mind, so you asked me to dance to escape a minister's wife. You stepped on my foot during the waltz and apologized in French." A faint smile touched her mouth. "I told you, I never forget a face."

Gideon said nothing, but he picked up the whiskey.

"Relax. If I wanted you arrested, you'd already be in handcuffs." Sabine leaned against the edge of her desk, and the playfulness drained from her face. "My husband built Royce Shipping from three boats and a bank loan. Four years ago, Vale Maritime decided they wanted his routes. Contracts vanished, inspectors found problems that didn't exist, and the banks stopped returning his calls. Every door was closed by someone who answered to your uncle." Her voice stayed level, but her fingers tightened around her glass. "Vale swallowed the company whole. Six months later, my husband's heart gave out. He was forty-one."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be useful." She set the glass down. "Here's my offer. I keep your secret, and I become your ally. I have money, eyes all over this harbor, and a club where every powerful man in Harrowgate drinks too much and talks too freely. When you take back Meridian, I get the Vale fleet." She paused. "If you refuse, I make one call to the police commissioner, and your story ends tonight." She said it lightly, the way other women remarked on the weather, and Gideon understood that she meant every word.

Gideon took a slow sip of whiskey, then put the glass down.

"Seven years ago," he said, "three pieces in your famous collection came into this country aboard a Royce ship without ever passing through customs. The Emperor's Rose sapphire and two Mughal emerald pendants. The customs inspector who signed them through owed my father a favor, and he told him everything." He met her eyes. "It's all in the Ledger, Sabine. Names, dates, amounts. My father never used it. I would."

For the first time, her composure flickered. Then she laughed, low and genuinely amused. "Well. You're your father's son after all."

"A partnership," Gideon said. "Not a leash."

"A partnership." She raised her glass. "Each of us with a knife at the other's throat. Honestly, it's the only kind I trust."

They touched glasses.

* * *

Downstairs, Iris was still standing near the stage with fake pearls at her throat when Preston struck back.

He had left the ballroom for less than ten minutes. When he returned, the color had come back into his face, and he walked straight to a tall man in a tailored suit who had been drinking at the bar all evening. Captain Marcus Thane, the police commissioner's son, set down his glass and followed him onto the stage.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Preston said, and his voice shook with what sounded like grief. "I owe you the truth. When my guards opened that case tonight, the Tide Queen was genuine. I would stake my life on it." He turned to Iris, and his eyes were as hard as stones. "Sometime this evening, it was replaced with a copy. And only one person has worn it."

Iris stared at him. "You can't be serious."

"Forty million dollars," Preston said quietly. "I suppose three years married to a beggar teaches a woman to be practical."

Thane stepped forward with a pair of handcuffs. "Iris Whitlock, you're under arrest on suspicion of theft."

The cold steel closed around her wrists in front of two hundred people, and phones rose all over the ballroom. Iris searched the crowd for her family, for anyone. Gideon was nowhere in sight, and she wondered if he even knew. Then she found her grandmother.

Margaret's face was gray with fear. Iris knew that look. She had seen it every time the Vales threatened to walk away. Margaret glanced at Mrs. Vale, then at the raised phones, and lifted her chin.

"I don't know what my granddaughter has done," she said, loudly enough for every camera to catch it. "But the Whitlock family will not be dragged into this. From tonight, she is no Whitlock."

The words hit harder than the handcuffs, and for a moment Iris couldn't breathe. Behind Margaret, Celeste pressed her lips together to hide a smile, and Damien didn't bother hiding his at all. With Iris gone, only one heir was left in the Whitlock family, and he was standing right there in the suit his mother had paid for.

Thane marched her out through the parting crowd.

* * *

Gideon reached the lobby just as the police car pulled away from the pier. Through the rain-streaked back window, he caught one glimpse of Iris's pale face, her eyes searching the doorway for him. Then the car turned onto the harbor road and was gone.

Marcus Thane hadn't gone with it. He stood under the club's awning, lighting a cigarette, clearly waiting to enjoy this.

"Forty million," he said, blowing smoke into the rain. "A theft that size means twenty years, minimum. She's a soft girl. By morning she'll sign a confession just to make the questions stop."

Gideon said nothing. Rain dripped from the edge of the awning between them, and his hands were very still at his sides.

Thane stepped closer, near enough that Gideon could smell the whiskey on his breath, and lowered his voice.

"A mutual friend at Meridian sends his regards. He says you can make this go away." He smiled. "Just walk into my station and tell them your real name."